Michael Porter: companies need to be a little schizophrenic

This is what Michael Porter says to managers complaining that situations are changing too rapidly to allow companies to draw up long-term strategies: “If you want to stand out as a leader, you must find time for strategy”.
Michael Porter is the world’s leading authority in competitive strategy and is considered one of the founders of modern management.
“Corporate strategy, the overall plan for a diversified company, is both the darling and the stepchild of contemporary management practice. The darling because CEOs have been obsessed with diversification since the early 1960s, and the stepchild because almost no consensus exists about what corporate strategy is, much less about how a company should formulate it”. This is how Porter begins his latest award winning article “From competitive advantage to corporate strategy”, published in Harvard Business Review in 2001.
The journey from competitive strategy to corporate strategy is not easy to travel and can be compared in business to crossing the Bermuda Triangle, says Porter, who ranked first in the Thinkers 50 listing in 2005 (this ranking includes the world’s most significant and the most influential thinkers).
Porter is scheduled to speak in Bucharest on November 30 during the “Strategy and Leadership” conference organised by Ziarul Financiar and Interact.
“Strategy must have continuity. It cannot be reinvented constantly. Innovation is at the centre of economic growth. Companies need to be a little schizophrenic. On the one hand, they must secure strategy continuity and, on the other hand, they must know how to improve constantly,” he explains.
The failure of corporate strategy is indicated when organisations, from highly diversified fields of activity, are not aware of how to add value to their businesses. Multiple diversification methods have to be tested and a clear strategy model selected, believes Porter, who is also a professor at the Harvard Business School and president of the school’s programme for the newest CEOs of successful multinationals.
Porter’s books are not only studied at Harvard, but in all business schools. He has written 17 books and held conferences all over the world, providing information to understand the way competitive advantages differentiate companies, leaders and nations.